The $520 Million Company That's Solving All Your Financial Needs

NerdWallet co-founder Tim Chen wanted to build a personal finance company that would provide smart, unbiased information. He could have used some in overcoming his company's near-death experience.

- Maria Aspan

TIM CHEN WANTS TO buy a house. This shouldn’t be a problem: Though only 33 and shopping in the heart of bubblicious San Francisco, the former hedge fund analyst knows almost everything there is to know about personal finance. He’s also worth something like $265 million on paper. But Chen, characteristically, wants to consider almost. Every. Option.

“I wanted to test out the process,” he tells me, in the midst of a fast-paced yet halting monologue about shopping for, qualify ing for, and closing on a home. Short and trim, his button-down and jeans accented by black hair in an unexpected hipster pouf, Chen is quietly intellectual, deeply self-critical, and the sort of conversation partner who struggles to keep pace with his own thoughts. It leads to a lot of elliptical discussions.

It’s early October, and Chen and his girlfriend are in the latter stages of buying a single-family house in Corona Heights. As he started this ordinary but complex task, he wanted to really understand the range of financing available to him—so he asked three different lenders to prequalify him for a mortgage. It’s what Chen’s company, NerdWallet, does: review the strengths and weaknesses of financial products for three million monthly web visitors.